Zuora brings subscription payment lifeline for Facebook apps

Many among the legion of third-party Facebook app developers are looking for …

The developers behind many of Facebook's 660,000-plus applications are looking for ways to finally start making money from their hard work. Advertising does not seem to be working out well, and as the Web industry in general begins considering micropayments for salvation, a company called Zuora has announced a new e-commerce service for Facebook developers. The real question now, however, is what kinds of applications will actually get users to pay.

At the DEMO 2009 conference in Palm Springs, Zuora today announced "Z-Commerce for Facebook," a complete payment, billing, and subscription service that Facebook developers can plug into their applications. Zuora already offers a similar solution for Salesforce.com developers and other subscription-based businesses, and soon Facebook developers will be able to charge as little as 25� with either pay-to-play transactions or recurring subscription plans. The company is holding a "Subscribe, Don't Advertise" developer challenge, where developers are encouraged to sign up to help beta test Z-Commerce before Zuora releases it publicly.

Zuora is certainly not the first company to tackle the challenge of monetizing Facebook applications, or even providing a micropayment system. Facebook's own developer wiki lists a number of monetization options, including advertisers, affiliate marketers, analytics services, and micropayment options such as Amazon, PayPal, and Spare Change, the "first and largest micropayments solution on Facebook." Zuora's Z-Commerce is interesting because it brings a new layer of flexibility through both a subscription option that can work on daily, monthly, or yearly intervals, and its low per-transaction minimum that requires no clunky prepurchase system, such as Spare Change's points buckets or even Facebook's own Gift Shop micropayments.

The race for social networking micropayments may be on, but users do not yet seem to be itching to start paying for services and applications, many of which are already offered for free. Print publications may be considering online micropayments as a way to turn the revenue frown upside down, but Facebook app developers may not be in as advantageous of a position to do the same. So far, only a handful of Facebook apps have reportedly seen success at generating revenue, but even then, they are typically activist apps like (Lil) Green Patch and Causes that are just mediators for donations to organizations.

Zuora told Ars that Teach The People (TTP), the "People Powered University," is one of the first developers that it is testing Z-Commerce with. TTP allows Facebook users to offer lessons on just about anything, and with Zuora, a limited number of premium teachers are now able to charge for their lessons.

If a new era of profitability is to be ushered in for Facebook's vast ecosystem, though, developers will need to seriously step up their game. Better application experiences, much better UI, and truly useful (and, sure, let's not forget "fun") features that make one's Facebook profile more functional will need to arrive before users are willing to pay to play. Applications like TTP are an interesting start. But more involved games, and perhaps even a Bebo-like social dashboard that provides rich access to one's other online activity and content (such as e-mail and Flickr photos), have a shot at generating microrevenue as well.

In any case, micropayment and subscription options for Facebook apps are surfacing. Now we'll have to see if developers can put these systems to good use.